


Entries from The Junior Ganymede Digest: WOOSTER, Bertie -- THE EPISODE OF THE ENDANGERED AUNT

by 512dre



Category: CHRISTIE Agatha - Works, Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse, Poirot - Agatha Christie, WODEHOUSE P. G. - Works
Genre: Crossover, Drones Club, Edwardian Period, Gen, Junior Ganymede Club, London, Murder Mystery, Mystery, United Kingdom, Valeting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1988745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/512dre/pseuds/512dre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a fine morning one week before Christmas, Bertie Wooster is debating Jeeves on the subject of neckwear.  They are suddenly interrupted by an unexpected visitor bearing dangerous news.  Bertie, Jeeves, and the visitor are then thrust into a situation which they cannot control.  Their only hope is to follow the heels of a deadly criminal and unravel the mystery of his identity.  They have to bring the criminal down, before it is too late for the people whom Bertie holds most dear...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entries from The Junior Ganymede Digest: WOOSTER, Bertie -- THE EPISODE OF THE ENDANGERED AUNT

**A DIGEST OF THE MANNERS, DISPOSITIONS, AND AFFAIRS OF OUR MASTERS**

Edited by the Benchers of the Junior Ganymede Club

For the singular benefit of our dedicated members

 

Volume MCLXXIV

 

_STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL_

THE CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME MAY NOT BE DISCLOSED TO ANYONE EXCEPT MEMBERS IN GOOD STANDING OF THE JUNIOR GANYMEDE CLUB. THIS VOLUME MAY NOT BE READ, SHEWN, CONSULTED, LENT, USED AS A PAPER WEIGHT OR OTHERWISE CONSUMED, BY PERSON OR FIRE, UNLESS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE CLUB LIBRARIAN.

 

THIS VOLUME MAY ONLY LEAVE THE CONFINES OF THE CLUBHOUSE READING ROOM WITH THE SEALED PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE EPHORATE. ANY MEMBER WHO BREACHES THESE TERMS, _SCIENTER_ OR NO, SHALL BE HALED BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE AND SHALL BE REQUIRED PROVISIONALLY TO SURRENDER HIS WHITE SHOECUFFS.

 

 

1912

Junior Ganymede Press

207C Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ER

**INTRODUCTORY**

 

Ever since the very first edition of the Digest appeared clandestinely in 1551, the Junior Ganymede has made great strides.  We no longer write in cypher or chain our members to their lecterns.  And with the advent of the canteen and the typewriter we have improved in every regard our methods for expansively reporting on our masters, their manners, dispositions, and affairs.  This form of reporting, as we are all keenly aware, is a very hallowed tradition for us.  It enriches our living archive of patronal reminiscences, enables us to become quickly acquainted with the lineages to which we promise fealty, and helps us meditate on our masters’ expectations and consequently on our shortcomings as their right hands.

 

More than a medium for discovering prospective employers, the Digest is a repository of profound lessons abounding in utility for the personal gentleman in the day to day.  The cure for one master’s minor ailment, the solution to one employer’s slightest predicament, may well be another’s salvation from death, insolvency, or—what is avowedly more dangerous—seduction by artfully disguised sirens.  It is therefore our utmost moral obligation, as gentlemen’s personal gentlemen, to undertake from time to time, under the benevolent watch of our Librarian, a deep and comprehensive study of this and the other volumes that comprise our extensive _catena aurea_. No man, whether butler, steward, or valet, can excel in his craft unless he first have studied the technique of his peers and his ancients, by availing himself of these volumes.

 

To this noble and very utile end, we are also called upon individually to fulfill our oaths to the Junior Ganymede and to submit to the Club Benchers biweekly reports, of _no longer than_ three-hundred single-spaced pages, regarding the manners, dispositions, and affairs of our employers.  Fulfillment of this duty is essential for maintenance of this Digest and the _mos maiorum_.  If we forsake this duty, we run the serious risk of groping about in the dark. And then, what could _possibly_ stand between our masters and the downfall of our human species?

 

 

Yours faithfully,

 

J.E.M. de St. James

Majordomo Maximus

 

London, April 4, 1912.

 

 

 

**W**

**WOOSTER, Mr. Bertram Wilberforce**

_By Mr. Reginald Jeeves_

_THE EPISODE OF THE ENDANGERED AUNT_

_CHAPTER 1_

The episode I shall now recount, surrounding Mr. Wooster’s acquaintance with a foreign gentleman of great renown, is a fine example of how even the most trying circumstances rarely affect my master’s buoyant temperament—though the same, I must confess, to my mortification, cannot be said about me.

 

It was a week before Christmas, and I was collecting some of Mr. Wooster’s belongings for our trip to the country, to the residence of the Lord and Lady Plant, who had invited my master as well as a wide array of other notables for their yearly solstitial celebration at Waverley Abbey.

 

“Pack the purple cravat, Jeeves,” he said, to my dismay. “I shall proudly display it at Lady Plant’s required bridge tournament.  And now, now Jeeves.  Ho-hum if you will, but the cravat bally well goes! I simply cannot submit in _every_ respect, Jeeves.  A man must reign supreme on the subject of neckwear.”

 

“I confess I do not recall a purple cravat, sir,” I rejoined, genuinely.

 

“Well of course you do, Jeeves!  I bought it less than a week ago.  I remember you complimented it as being ‘as generous and formidable as a regal tablecloth.’ ”

 

Trapped by my previous protestation, I could not at this point recant. “Yes, sir.  You mean the violet neckband with the white dots, fairly reminiscent of an ornate Italian bib.”

 

“Bib Jeeves!  Bib!” my master said, throwing up his hands.  “It’s the latest in Parisian fashion.”

 

“You will pardon me, sir, for my ignorance of Gallic tastes.”

 

“Aha, Jeeves!  It is this very fact, viz., that not a single cell in your Newtonian brain is taken up with anything remotely French that I find so—”

 

Although his assessment unfairly ignored the latter part of my adolescence, spent as apprentice sous-chef to an émigré from Lyon, I cannot with definitude decide whether Mr. Wooster was about to bestow praise or criticism, as he was brusquely interrupted by a very loud knock from the front door. I apologized that his words should have been so intersected, and proceeded to receive the visitor.

 

“Ah, _pardon monsieur_ , I should not have locked so loudly, but I was wanting to be sure that there was someone home to receive me,” the visitor said.

 

Over the course of my employ with Mr. Wooster, I have at various times been in the presence of gentlemen whose personal gentlemen were clearly not members, nor affiliated with, nor even aware of, the Junior Ganymede. Unfortunately, my master seems to collect those friends.  Yet never had I encountered such a manifest departure from our core professional tenets as I did that morning.  This poor gentleman’s valet would have failed even the most elementary examination provided by our indulgent society.  He let his master dress such as to be easily confused with the keeper of a cabaret. Young valets, take note.

 

The somewhat rotund fellow at the door wore shoes of patent leather, although it was morning and he was paying a house visit.  His trousers were of light wool, winter notwithstanding, of a blue hue that tended towards mauve, with pinstripes.  His silk vest, baroquely embroidered, evoked a medieval Flemish tapestry.  And his collar, though stiff, was surrounded by a neckband of a flamboyancy remarkably similar to that which had previously been the unspoken cause of my attrition with Mr. Wooster. Under the man’s penetrating eyes, a Coriolanian nose was adorned with a bizarre moustache, evidently carefully waxed and groomed but in very dubious taste, as the edges were turned up like the horns of a bull.  And it was clear for anyone as perspicacious as us at the Junior Ganymede, that under the man’s bowler hat (perhaps his only acceptable article of clothing), his pitch-black hair was slicked back in the Continental style.  The man certainly did not have an English valet in his employ; yet nor did he have a French valet from any of the respected Continental societies with which I am acquainted.

 

“By George, Poirot!” my master exclaimed, emerging from his bedroom, as I took the visitor’s hat and coat.  “I thought the building was on fire.  Come in! What brings you to King Wooster’s court?”

 

“ _Mon cher ami_ , I fear not good tidings, not good tidings,” he said, with a despondent look. Remarkably, he was simultaneously able to look at me, across the room, lengthwise.  I was at that very moment arranging the table for a morning tea, at the corner of the sitting room.  He then lowered his voice, though I was still able to hear him.

 

“I have discovered something very disturbing; and I need your help. I will tell you at once, since we have no time to waste.  Any moment to us is precious. It may be a matter of life and death, this one.”  He paused for effect, while my master gasped, then proceeded: “But do you think that your man can be trusted?”

 

“What? Jeeves!” Mr. Wooster said, his voice booming.  “I trust him more than twenty bishops. The man’s more silent than a sarcophagus, when not spoken to; he’d never spill your beans. The proper feudal spirit, and all that.” I moved to and fro, arranging the teacups, so as not to make it too clear that I found my master’s compliments a pleasant divertissement.

 

“And I should add that he also, like you, has a brain the size of a small planet. His diet is still a mystery to me. I think it’s the sardines. And I haven’t the foggiest what I’d do without him.  I tell you, he’s unmatched, from the neck up.  Well, perhaps you’re the exception, old top.”  Mr. Wooster then turned to me.  “Say Jeeves, perhaps you could lend Poirot a hand, or rather some of those little gray cells, what?”

 

Feigning ignorance of the conversation that was transpiring would not have met with prosperous consequences.  “I could not refuse the request, sir,” I said.

 

Monsieur Poirot glanced up at me again, and though I was absorbed with setting out the cutlery, I could not help but notice the faint shadow of suspicion still lurking over his brow.  Yet my master quickly recaptured his attention.

 

“So, Poirot you old scout!  Out with it, or I will have to force you to lunch with Tuppy and me at the Drone’s.”

 

That was a sanction that, by his expression, M. Poirot clearly wished to avoid. Though there was some hesitation still, he finally broke his silence.  Yet the news was not fortunate.  What he said startled Mr. Wooster out of his seat; and nearly made me drop a scone.

 

He cleared his throat, in a dramatic way, and then discharged: “It’s your aunt, Bertie.  Mrs. Gregson. Your Aunt Agatha.” My master’s eyes widened.

 

“She is in grave, mortal danger!”

**Author's Note:**

> The Junior Ganymede is the an ancient and highly exclusive club for England's best butlers, stewards, and valets. It keeps a large, multi-volume book called "A DIGEST OF THE MANNERS, DISPOSITIONS, AND AFFAIRS OF OUR MASTERS," containing an entry about each members' employer. Although edited by the "Benchers" (i.e. higher-ups) of the Club, each entry is written by the butlers, stewards, and valets themselves.
> 
> Our story is comprised of a series of entries in the Digest, written by Mr. Reginald Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's personal gentlemen.


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